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Strategy design pattern falls under the category of Behavioral Design Pattern. In this pattern, we capture abstraction in an Interface or Abstract class called Strategy Base, and we bury implementation details of algorithms in concrete classes called Concrete Strategy. Client code can then call such different implementation methods based upon some strategy or condition during run time. Client is not tied statically or bound to call fixed methods, rather it can change its strategy dynamically. This is because client never calls any methods directly by instantiating concrete classes. Client sets its strategy via some other class called Context.

We see each of the concrete strategy class implementing algorithm to calculate upon numbers in its own way- one doing addition, while other doing subtraction. But their over all capability to do arithmetic operations upon numbers is abstracted inside Calculate(int, int) method in StrategyBase class.

See the Context class above. It has a property Strategy to get-set of type StrategyBase type. Alternatively, Context class can get-set instance of StrategyBase by a constructor or some method as well like SetStrategy(StrategyBase objSB).

But why do we require this Context class? Because clients agree to call any ConcreteStrategy method not directly. Clients will only hint out for such concrete strategy. What does this mean? This means a lot- Strategy pattern lets you change the guts of an object.

Template method design pattern falls under the category of Behavioral Design Pattern. In this pattern, a template method defines a skeleton of an algorithm in terms of abstract operations. The template method can contain one or more steps. But these steps will have to be in abstract form only. That said, we cannot change the order of steps, and most importantly we cannot override the template method itself. Only the steps given in the skeleton of algorithm of template method need to be overridden in concrete classes.

We see the concrete classes are overriding the abstract operations defined by the template method in its algorithm. This way template method pattern provides an abstract view of algorithm.

So in practical scenario, this pattern fits only when different types of object instances are required to invoke methods or operations that differ sharply in implementation but the algorithm remaining same. Also, sometimes when are refactoring multiple classes, we can find template method pattern coming into picture.

Important point to note here is: the way we are calling TemplateMethod() of ConcreteClassA from base class AbstractAlgorithmSkeleton reminds us of “The Hollywood Principle”- “Do not call us, we will call for you”. That is, child class method is being called from base class. This way of method call is also known as Inversion of Control.

Decorator design pattern falls under the category of Structural Design Pattern. Structural design pattern emphasizes upon the overall structure of classes and objects in the system either by doing class inheritance or by composing objects into larger structures using object composition. Decorator pattern comes handy when we want to add additional responsibilities to the object during run time.

Additional responsibilities can be added statically by class inheritance also. But this will create another problem when we want to add such responsibilities to objects of many classes. We may have to create many child classes to support additional new functions.

So instead of creating many child classes of already existing concrete classes, we create a new Decorator, and a new Concrete Decorator class that will add new methods and properties to the existing class object during run time. This way we are not modifying the existing concrete or legacy classes. Responsibilities to objects can be added during runtime because base class of the object and Decorator class share the same base type. And Concrete Decorator class extends the new Decorator.

This design pattern does not come initially during system design. It generally comes during maintenance phase or later in the development phase.

Now let’s see the example of decorator design pattern. We even use mobile phone to send text and multimedia messages. Once the message is sent, the Outbox becomes empty. But sometimes we want to save the sent content message. To do this, we need to select the option of “Send and Save”, and any message sent this way will be saved inside “Sent” folders. Here, even if the user may not always want to save the sent messages, it is for sure that he may definitely want to send messages. Keeping this use case in mind, let’s look into such a class design.

Fig: Base class for SMS and MMS Concrete Classes

Fig: Overall class structure after the introduction of Decorator

From the above diagram, we see two main concrete classes that are involved in sending messages- MobileMMS sends image as message content while MobileSMS send text. Both of the classes are doing well with SendMessage() method. SendMessage() is an abstract method in BaseMessage root class. Decorator, often called DecoratorBase, can be seen inheriting from the same base type of these two MobileMMS and MobileSMS classes, i.e.; inheriting from BaseMessage class. For a Decorator class this is important.

Then, we see MessageProcessor class (often called ConcreteDecorator) which is a concrete implementation of Decorator.

Note: BaseMessage, MobileMMS and MobileSMS are the original classes. Only due to SendAndSave option, a new responsibility SaveMessage() is now required to be added into the objects of MobileMMS and MobileSMS. This is how we see DecoratorBase and ConcreteDecorator need to be added later on.

Now see the SendSMS and SendMMS methods: how the constructor methods of MessageProcessor are accepting object instances. This is called object composition, and important for Concrete Decorator. This way MessageProcessor will be able to direct the call to the actual method of the class. See the SendMessage() method code above in MessageProcessor.